My son the “chef” at Disney World.
This past weekend, I was fortunate enough to spend some time with my mother and sister. Thankfully, they were able to look beyond my petulant demeanor as they have come to expect nothing less of me during this time of the year.
Uncle Sam Wants You
You see it is tax season for me. The time of the year that I least enjoy. The time of the year where as the days draw closer to April 15th I least like those whom I serve which candidly is almost everyone – as the bulk of my clients wait until the final weeks and days to get started.
Each and every year about this time, I’m inundated with so many Tax Organizers and supporting documents that I can’t even find seconds much less minutes to spend quality time with family, eat a decent meal or get a goodnight’s sleep. Each year, this year being no exception, I wonder why I put myself through this torture – trying to accommodate people who know that tax season is a 3 month and 15 day marathon not a 30 -45 day sprint. Sometimes, I wonder if I wouldn’t be better served by simply poking my eyes out, pouring hot tar and feathers over me and then getting hit by a speeding train.
Mope No More
As I was contemplating the sorry state of my taxed existence and whether or not I would be better off if I was blind, tarred & feathered and/or pulverized by a speeding train, the moments with my mother and sister began to feel a little bit like Calgon. As if I was the actor in the commercial uttering the words “take me away”, the conversation with my mother and sister temporarily relieved the anxiety and soothed the loathing sensation. For an all too brief but much-needed period, those moments with my mother and sister were Chicken Soup for my overtaxed soul. For a short period of time, thanks to them, I was able to reflect upon some fun times from my childhood.
To Thine Own Self Be True
During one of those conversations with my sister, I remembered a time, unlike now, when I apparently embraced the widely contested life philosophy – “do what you love”. During the summer between the end of my ninth grade and start of my tenth grade year, I decided to take my love for cooking to another level. In the summer of 1980, I married my love for cooking to my Ojay’s “love of money”.
It was during that summer that I set out to “unofficially” open my own restaurant. I performed and analysis of the target consumer to see if a need for my services existed. Then I created a menu, confirmed the restaurants location and had established the hours. Unbeknownst to my younger and only sister, I had even hired my first employee. More accurately, in the spirit of true original unadulterated American capitalism, I had hired my sister as my first unpaid intern.
Having cooked for many of my neighborhood friends – who unlike me either didn’t know how to cook or did not embrace cooking – I had a large enough statistical sample to know that my restaurant was more than a viable enterprise. My customers demanded simple food items like hamburgers, hot dogs, red-hot polish sausages, chicken wings, French fries and tacos. I could prepare those things in my sleep. Check! Those things were marked off my “To Do” list.
Location, Location, Location
This is the part of the story where my cooking entrepreneurial dreams like Dr. Evil’s strategy for complete and total world domination begin to fall apart. Unlike the early settlers and founding fathers, I didn’t possess the armaments or deceptive legal acumen to displace the rightful owners of my new restaurants location. My restaurant, without my parents’ knowledge of course, was going to have the same address as my parents’ home. More accurately, my restaurant was at my parents’ home.
Cooking is My Business and Business is Good
The first several weeks this strategy went swimmingly. Neither of my parents were aware of my little enterprise. Once my parents, left for work and I was sure that they would not be making some unexpected U-turn, my restaurant would open. Before either of my parents returned home from work, my restaurant would be closed. I would be supremely careful not to leave any trace of the restaurant’s existence.
At first, I was simply serving lunch but as the word spread about my restaurant, on occasion I would welcome a breakfast customer. Nonetheless, the bulk of my business was during lunch hour.
This was the time of the day that Latchkey kids like me were hungry. We had played outside with our friends all morning and it would be at least four to five more hours before our mother’s got home to feed us. Noon to 1 pm was the time of day that my customers were looking for something good to eat, something that looked and tasted like the food sold at their favorite fast food restaurant. There was no fast food restaurant for miles so Chateau Nate’s was the place to be.
Well cooking was my business and business was so good that I usually had more disposable cash than my parents. On a couple of occasions my father would even ask me to “loan him some money” which for the record rarely turned out to be a loan. My pockets were so fat, I considered the loan just an occasional trifling of being a successful businessman.
Here Comes the Boom!
Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. One late summer afternoon, I ran out of lighter fluid for the grill. I didn’t have time to ride my bike to the drugstore to get another can of lighter fluid. It was closing in on lunch hour and I had too many customers to serve. So, I went into the garage and got the gas can. A gas can that I used in one of my other enterprises, cutting grass or as it is now professionally referenced – landscaping.
I figured lighter fluid is flammable, gas is flammable – problem solved. Not so much! Yep, you guessed it! I poured gasoline on an already lit barbecue grill. Flames jumped onto the nozzle of the gas can. I threw the gas can down on the small concrete patio. In short, I nearly blew up my restaurant, my parents’ home.
As the fire spread onto the back of the house and on the grass, I knew that my dreams of complete and total restaurant domination had like Cheech and Chong gone “Up in Smoke”. My restaurant had just gone out of business and there would be no reopening.
Surprisingly, I didn’t get the beating that I expected. Oh, I feared that this might be the mother of all beatings and trust me; I knew all about getting a beating. I think my parents spared me because they were more proud of me than they were angry.
During that month or so that my restaurant was open for business, I managed to make some money, enhance a skill, babysit my sister, learn some new skills and put the fire out before there was any real damage done to our home. To this day neither of my parents have ever confirmed my suspicion that they were actually proud of my entrepreneurial spirit. Regardless of their admission, one thing I know for sure, cooking had once again provided me with some lessons that I could carry with me throughout my life:
- Follow Your Bliss – I loved to cook and during the summer of 1980, cooking afforded me with resources to be more self-sufficient than any other fourteen year old that I personally knew. I could buy just about anything that I wanted. Although, I didn’t buy much, I felt a humble sense of pride that I was able to do things for myself that my peers could not do without burdening their parents.
- Principles of Business – Operating my own covert restaurant provided me with real world business experiences. Experiences that I would later have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to be taught in a university classroom. The summer of 1980, I participated in my own personal JA venture. I learned about the laws of supply and demand, marginal utility, market demand and more. Even more, I learned something that has stayed with me since that fateful day where I nearly blew up my parents’ home. It is so fulfilling be your own boss especially when your clients are happy and business is good but it can also be the loneliest time and experience when your clients annoy you and when business is bad.
I learned a bunch of other things that summer which in closing I will only mention briefly. I fully grasped terms such as extortion, insurance and taxation. My so-called intern sister soon turned out to be a skilled extortionist as I had to pay her off to keep quiet about my business. I really understood the value of insurance. Had I burned down my parents’ home, I would have needed some health, disability, long-term care and maybe even worse life insurance. Lastly, coming full circle, the “loans” to my father taught me about taxation. As we all lament this time of year, you earn it and he – Uncle Sam or in my case Tommie Turner – takes it away.
The visit from my mother and sister during tax season served me well. I was reminded about how I once turned something that I loved into a thriving enterprise. Maybe the post left you asking yourself the same question that I am asking of myself, if I could follow my bliss in 1980 what is stopping me from following my bliss in 2013?
They say time waits for no one so we had better get started following our bliss. Even tax filing has a deadline.
Are you teaching your children that it is okay to do what you love?